


Keep on keeping on

by Laramie



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-11-05 06:49:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 9,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11008173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laramie/pseuds/Laramie
Summary: Damage can be caused in a lot of ways. All we can really do is keep on keeping on, and try to save who we can.[LONG-TERM HIATUS]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was a prompt given to me... uh... a long time ago. I started it ages ago, still not completely sure what I'll do with it but I thought that if I started posting, it would give me a push to finish it.

It seemed darker out here, somehow. In Thomas's youth, he had barely known what night was amid the gaslamps of Manchester, beyond a yawning stretch of time in which mischief could be made. Provided one could sneak into and out of bed without disturbing slumbering parents. Thomas had run about the streets in the deepest hours of the night, and rarely wanted for light by which he and his fellows could throw eggs at the doors of disliked inhabitants and pull all sorts of other stunts.

It was not until moving to rural Yorkshire that the young Thomas Barrow learned what night truly was. The hooting of owls drifting across the dark lawn, the lowing of cattle, the moon and stars the only outdoor illumination once the sun had abandoned them. He had learned to tolerate, if not quite enjoy, the stillness.

Nighttime in a trench was a different animal altogether. There was no friendly dark, only creeping obscurity. Instead of cattle lowing, on any given night Thomas was likely to hear someone sobbing. Even the stars looked further away - dimmed, and the moon seemed to have turned her face away in shame. But the soldiers rarely wished for light, because illumination came only in the form of bombs, and they could do without any more of those.

Some of the men clung together in the night out here - for warmth, or to cool their libidos, or simply because there was no one to talk to but each other. Most of them would go home to wives or sweethearts and not give a second thought to their behaviour. It was war, after all. Those who had already wanted men in civilian life were often too afraid to take part in such activities, though they could hear them, lying in what passed for a bed in the cold creeping dark and trying not to think about what they had done that day and what would have to be done tomorrow.

This was the night Thomas found himself in when a sad-eyed corporal came to sit with him outside a dugout. Thomas had been smoking a cigarette, and watched Phillips warily in case he had his eye on them. Thomas had precious few as it was, and had been reduced to smoking one a day for weeks. They had only stayed dry long enough because he had stolen a pewter cigarette case from a sergeant who had lost his way, his arm, and eventually his life.

But Phillips didn't seem to be interested in smoking. He sat on a muddy piece of wood and stared unseeing at the wall of the trench in front of him.

Thomas half wanted him to go away and leave him to smoke in peace. Only half, though.

“That latrine stinks,” Phillips said dully after a minute or so. Every soldier said it at least once a day, lately. It had been dug too close this time. Lieutenant Cotton had threatened half-heartedly to court-martial the privates responsible but he hadn't got round to it.

Thomas agreed absently that the latrine stank, thinking about the pigs that had lived on the Downton estate which he had seen on occasional walks.

“My wife's just had our second child,” said Phillips, and Thomas, turning automatically at the sound of his voice, saw his eyes fill with tears.

 _You've already had one; I'm sure the second wouldn't have been so different_ , was Thomas's first thought. He held his tongue, mostly because he was too tired to bother, and scratched the top of his head as a headlouse bit. Most days he hated the nits more than the Germans. At least the Germans just wanted to kill him.

Phillips began crying in earnest. “I just want to hold them,” he sobbed.

 _Lucky you,_ Thomas thought, _Having someone to miss._  He moved his foot with a muddy squelch to deter a rat from attempting to chew on his boot.

Then Phillips was upon him, wrapping his arms around Thomas's chest and weeping into his uniform. It startled Thomas so much that he almost turned his bayonet on the man, before his brain caught up with what was happening.

“Corporal - _Phillips_ … get _off_ me!” Thomas growled.

“Just let me pretend,” sobbed Phillips. “Please, just let me pretend.”

And although Thomas fidgeted a little, it was the first time he had been embraced in many months, and he eventually fell asleep with the corporal curved against his back and a pair of khaki-covered arms tight around his middle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews would be very helpful on this fic, both for motivation and possibly for shaping what is to come! I have two and a half more chapters already written, then I'll be flying by the seat of my pants.


	2. Chapter 2

Needless to say, the one thing most soldiers looked forward to more than anything else (apart from being sent home) was their turn for rest. One glorious week out of the trenches after more than a month of stand-tos and gas alerts and working through the night. Being at rest didn’t always mean not having work to do, but at least Thomas could have a bloody bath and finally be free of the clinging mud for a couple of days. Thomas usually made his way to the nearest Estaminet, weighing up how much he wanted to smoke against how much he wanted to get drunk and try to forget where he was.

He didn’t socialise with the other soldiers much. He preferred to imagine he was on some strange sort of holiday, and tried to get some peace and quiet on his own. If he spent too long with the other soldiers, he’d always wind up imagining whose guts he’d be scraping up next. The only exception was if he passed a few men kicking about a football, a frequent occurrence, and one he quite often liked to join in with.

Sometimes, he even tried to find a man, if he was feeling brave or desperate enough. The secretly-army-supervised brothel was of little use to him, filled as it was with women. Even so, he had once considered trying it, but had not quite got up the nerve - he was afraid of not being able to enjoy it and thereby getting found out. He had only had sex twice since he had joined up nearly two years ago.

Fear. It was a constant companion to Thomas. He was afraid of getting trench foot and having to have a foot amputated. He had nightmares of rats eating his eyes while he slept, like the distended corpses he saw on no-man’s-land. He had acquired what felt like a permanent stoop to keep his head below the line of the trench and thereby out of sniper’s range. He dreaded the thought of trench fever, painful and persistent though only sometimes life-threatening. Sometimes he even thought it a reasonable risk to take in return for a couple of months out of the trenches to recover.

Most times, returning to the trench meant carrying a hell of a lot of equipment along with them. The enemy knew many of their routes to and from the trenches. The Allies rarely used the road, because it, along with other tracks, were targets for bombs.

On this night, Thomas was carrying a large coil of telephone cable on one shoulder and a couple of pieces of wooden floor grating under the other arm. He constantly had to readjust it all to avoid dropping anything. It was infuriating.

His unit were winding along a narrow track in the middle of the night, on the way back to the front line under a quarter moon. One of the privates was humming tunelessly under his breath. Thomas would dearly have loved to whack him over the head with a piece of floor grating but it seemed like too much effort.

The humming resolved itself into ‘ _All Things Bright and Beautiful’_ . _The Lord God made them all_ , Thomas thought. But then surely He must have made the lice and the rats and the flies that fed on the corpses, too?

The air seemed suddenly empty; a second later, Thomas realised the private had stopped humming, leaving the wordless phrase “each little bird that sings…” unfinished. Another second later, he realised why. The private had noticed it before Thomas, the growing screech like the sky was being ripped apart, close, closer than the background noise of artillery.

The ground a hundred yards behind them exploded.

The group were too well-trained and used to bombs to panic, but their pace increased, and the band hurried closer together.

“Not much further, men!” the Lieutenant shouted bracingly. “We’re nearly there!” But his eyes were on the sky.

Another screech, and the shell landed even nearer this time. The blast of it unbalanced them, scattering stones and clods of earth over their clean uniforms.

“Cover!” Lieutenant Cotton ordered.

Thomas could barely breathe for fright. Back at Downton, death had seemed like a distant, implausible improbability, but at moments like this Thomas felt that he might simply turn around and see a skeletal figure carrying a scythe, come to harvest his soul.

More shells: closer, further away, closer again. They didn’t seem to know exactly where the returning troops were. They were just dropping and hoping for luck. Thomas thought about dumping the telephone cable and the floor grating and making a run for it across foreign soil all on his own. Like a frightened rabbit before a fox. He crouched behind a rock that could barely have protected him in one direction, exposed still on all other sides.

Someone whimpered nearby. Another shell. A scream.

No more whimpering.

Thomas closed his eyes for a moment against the hot brightness and thought about Downton and smoking in the dark and quiet while the other servants chatted in the hall.

 _Boom_ . The nearest yet. More debris rained down on Thomas, and a metallic _ting_ told him that a piece of the bomb itself had just narrowly missed him, ricocheting off the rock. Thomas pressed one hand to his chest, trying to keep his heart inside it.

Another shell, and then - a cry of pain. All Thomas’s senses honed in on it. Getting to an injury quickly gave the best chance of saving the patient, and Thomas’s bones were heavy with the memory of those he had failed to save. He wanted to make someone live. Sometimes he thought that if he saved enough people, he would earn his own life. And the rock was scant protection anyway.

But he was afraid.

But the soldier was crying.

Thomas stood up, still stooping. He faced the direction of the sobbing but had barely taken three steps before the ground shattered under his feet. He was thrown back, his shoulder crashing against the rock he had been crouching behind.

For a moment, there was nothing but white-hot pain, forcing the very breath out of his lungs. He had instinctively squeezed his eyes shut, but now forced himself to open them. There was nothing but black. Was he dead? Was he blind?

The messages seemed to be taking a long time to crawl along his nerves to reach his brain. Thomas waited patiently, feeling hazy around the edges.

 _Ah_ , said the back of his head and his shoulders. _There’s pressure against us._

Thomas didn’t seem to hurt very much any more. Maybe he really was dead.

No. Pressure on the back of his head meant lying down. The blackness was the night sky.

 _We have something,_ reported his legs, the message spinning lazily up his spine. _What?_ Thomas asked them. It didn’t seem strange to be having a conversation with his legs. He blinked slowly, waiting. The reply took a long time to come.

 _Hurts_ , his legs said simply. _What does?_ he enquired, but his legs only answered more insistently: _hurts._ **_Hurts!_ **

_Ah, right,_ Thomas thought, his eyelids falling gently closed. _Hurts._


	3. Chapter 3

Brief interludes and incomplete impressions were all Thomas had left, each experienced like a full world of its own yet forgotten like a dream soon afterwards.

He followed Lieutenant Cotton on a long, long walk through no-man’s-land. He tried to protest that they shouldn’t be there but Cotton pointed and said: “They’re letting us through because of the dog.” Thomas looked down and saw Isis trotting happily at his heel.

“You shouldn’t be here either,” Thomas told her. “What’ll Lord Grantham say if you get sniper’d? I’ll be sacked.”

He hadn’t been looking where he was going, and fell into a trench shored up with sandbags. It didn’t seem to injure him but he lay there for a while anyway, while Isis whined and scratched and dug at his lower legs.

“I’ll take you for a walk tomorrow,” he promised her, but she didn’t stop.

-

Phillip was sitting at the head of the dining table at Downton Abbey, while Thomas ran up and down the servants’ stairs with dish after dish of roast pork, roast chicken, pea soup, delicate pastries, mince pies, hot cross buns, eggs, gravy, toast and marmalade, and the enormous pot Mrs Patmore used to make the morning porridge.

Meanwhile Phillip drank tea, ate nothing Thomas brought, and made comments about how Thomas’s arse was very attractive but he simply couldn’t be seen with a man who sweated so much.

-

Hot and bright. He was lying on a beach with the sun beating down on his face in earnest. There was a woman with him - lying on top of him, near enough. It was like being with a human-shaped fire, the woman was so hot. Thomas couldn’t see who it was.

-

His ankle was itching. He lifted a hand to relieve it but only managed a weak thud on his thigh.

-

He was in his mother’s womb, gently bouncing and swaying along. However, he was not a babe, but fully grown.

“This is impossible,” he said aloud, yet the sensation went on, for a long, long time.

-

He was in a guest bedroom at Phillip’s London house and Lady Sybil, in the uniform of a lady’s maid, was helping him remove his livery before dinner.

“I ought to have a valet, really,” Thomas pointed out to her, before realising: “I haven’t even met you yet.”

-

Elliot, Thomas’s first ever boyfriend as a teenager, was leading him by the hand through the many rooms of his house.

“It’s a long way,” Thomas complained. “I’m tired.”

“It’s not much further,” Elliot kept telling him. “Just round this corner… just a little longer…”

Eventually, they reached Elliot’s bedroom. They climbed into bed together, though Thomas couldn’t remember changing into pyjamas. Elliot lay behind Thomas and curled up around him, one arm around his chest. It was very comfortable. They lay silently and Elliot smoothed his fingers over Thomas’s chest.

“You should fuck me,” Thomas said sleepily. “Before your mum gets back.”

“Alright,” Elliot murmured, but he didn’t stop stroking Thomas’s chest. He made no move to carry out Thomas’s suggestion, though he did bite Thomas’s shoulder.

“Ow!” Thomas protested. “I don’t like that.”

“Sorry,” Elliot somehow managed to say, without releasing Thomas’s shoulder from his mouth. That seemed strange.

“Let go,” Thomas told him, but Elliot wouldn’t, and eventually Thomas fell asleep.

-

When Thomas woke, he was still in bed, but a very different bed. Propped up, he could see rows and rows of cots, each with a male occupant, many with visible bandages. There were a couple of women in the room, hurrying down the rows, carrying things or chatting to the men. Everything here seemed very white: the women clutched white paper or white bandages, all the bedclothes were white, the men’s faces all looked very white to a man used to mud and grime.

_ Shouldn’t be white _ , Thomas thought dully.  _ German’s’ll see it. And it’ll only get dirty anyway. _

“Are you with us again, Corporal Barrow?” said a friendly voice.

Thomas blinked, trying to bring the figure standing next to him into focus. It looked like Lady Sybil.

“You’ve been in and out a couple of times today,” she informed him. “Do you remember?”

Thomas attempted to shake his head but it made his neck hurt, as though he had pulled the muscles, so then he tried to answer verbally. It felt as though his lips were glued together. He licked them, though his tongue had no more moisture, and eventually managed to whisper: “Where?”

“You’re in the cottage hospital at Downton,” said Lady Sybil, laying a hand briefly on his shoulder. “You were injured at the Front -” here a touch of anxiety entered her expression. “So they sent you home. You’ve been delirious for a few days now.”

But Thomas barely heard this last; his brain had latched onto that one vital word, wrapping its comfort around him like a blanket.

_ Home. _

-

The next time Thomas awoke, it was to an intense itch just below his left knee. The room was quiet: it seemed to be night, though the gentle glow through the curtains spoke of a moon near full.

Thomas shifted his shoulders, testing the muscles. They were tight, but workable. Rather than sit up, Thomas twisted sideways; he was less propped-up than he had been last time he had woken up, and was able to pull his head off the pillow and shift around. Inch by inch, his fingers reached his knee, and lower.

It felt… different.

There seemed to be some kind of dent in his leg, but he couldn’t reach properly. There were footsteps across the room, which quickly grew louder as Thomas grunted and wriggled further. The damned  _ itch! _ His head was almost hanging off the side of the mattress. Under the blanket, his hand reached the itch, and moved in, and found... nothing. Thomas’s blood froze in his veins. He pulled in his hand and it cupped around a neat bandage wrapped around a stump.

The footsteps had reached him. “Corporal Barrow - are you - alright?”

Thomas struggled up to lean on his elbows. Lady Sybil - for the footsteps had been hers - hovered until she realised what he was trying to do, at which point she helped him to raise his head and shoulders enough to look down at his blanket-covered body. Or at least what was left of it. Just below the knee - on both legs - was a lump denoting bandages, and below it, the blankets lay flat against the bed. There was nothing there. And yet the nothing itched.

“I tried to explain yesterday,” said Lady Sybil, while Thomas flopped back flat on the bed. “But I don’t think you quite… heard.”

There was a rising panic inside Thomas, which he barely managed to temper. He forced himself to think clearly.

_ Right. So I’m not going back to the Front. They’ll have discharged me. Can’t have a soldier with no legs running around out there. Or not running, as the case may be. _ It was as though his brain had skipped over the “understanding what has happened” part straight onto the “how to deal with it” part. The world kept turning. What sort of work could be done by a man who couldn’t stand up?

He only realised that he was frowning at the ceiling when he heard Lady Sybil say: “Don’t despair, Corporal Barrow. I have a surprise for you - it should arrive in a couple of days.”

Thomas smiled grimly at her. “It’s  _ Mr  _ Barrow now, my lady,” he said proudly.


	4. Chapter 4

“And it’s Nurse Crawley,” said Lady Sybil - Nurse Crawley - as she passed over Thomas’s midday meal. “Just as I keep telling you.”

Sighing, Thomas gave up. He had witnessed Sybil’s gentle obstinacy over the years he had worked at Downton Abbey, and while his own stubbornness would usually be more than a match, he felt too tired to argue. Instead he focused on clumsily feeding himself. He had not injured his right arm, but it was uncoordinated and shaky. Dr Clarkson had said that it was caused only by lack of food and exercise during the time he had been unconscious, and would improve rapidly so long as he ate heartily. Well, never had a more easily-followed instruction been invented for Thomas Barrow.

Lady Sybil, as Thomas continued to think of her in his head, had promised that the surprise would arrive that afternoon. She seemed excited about it, but Thomas hated the thought of surprises - it made him nervous.

It was not long after he had finished his watery stew and bread that Lady Sybil hurried back to his bedside. She was pushing an unoccupied wheeled chair and beaming.

“Here it is, Mr Barrow,” she said proudly as she reached him. “I persuaded Papa to find the most modern wheelchair available. We wanted to make sure you’re comfortable, after looking after us for all these years.”

Thomas stared at the thing. It was large and wicker and had two pairs of different-sized wheels.

“You might find it a little tricky to start with, but you’ll soon get used to it,” Lady Sybil went on, looking a touch unnerved at the lack of reaction.

_ You’ll soon get used to it. _ Thomas was going to be stuck in this thing for a time not measured in days, or weeks, but his  _ entire life. _ On some level, he had blocked out the reality of this new existence. He had been thinking of employment, of his next meal, of  _ recovering _ … but no matter how well he recovered, legs didn’t grow back.

Thomas began to cry, hiding his face from Lady Sybil with his hands. Part of him, of course, the planning, practical part, had known that his legs were never coming back, but he had not truly  _ felt  _ it until that moment. He would never again be able to stand. He would not stroll down the lane to the village pub.

Thomas tried to master himself, embarrassed - even through his despair - that he had fallen apart in front of Lady Sybil. He never cried in company - never, ever.

“Oh, Mr Barrow,” Lady Sybil said sadly. “I’m sorry if it’s… too soon.”

Thomas wiped his eyes on his pyjama sleeves and sniffled. He tried to push away the knowledge that he would never walk again to a greater distance, a distance that would allow him to function on a day-to-day basis.

“It was gangrene,” Lady Sybil said quietly. “You were gravely ill. They had to amputate, or you would have died.”

He had lost his legs to save his life. That was the trade he had made.

“Even as it was, you were delirious for days - all the way home,” Lady Sybil explained. “We weren’t really sure if you’d ever wake up properly.”

Put as a choice between living in a wheelchair or dying on foreign soil, the wheelchair suddenly seemed a lot more manageable. He had needed, it seemed, to  _ understand _ \- to appreciate the circumstances of his injury. He had been blown up, for God’s sake, and yet here he was. And Lady Sybil, somehow, had known that he needed to realise the bleakness of the other path.

Meeting Nurse Crawley’s eyes, Thomas managed a small smile. “Thank you,” he said in a low voice.

Nurse Crawley smiled broadly back at him. “Would you like to try it?” she asked eagerly, edging the chair towards his bed.

Thomas eyed it nervously, full of a strange mixture of uncertainty and excitement. The chair had low armrests so that the user could reach the larger back wheels in order to push on the second rim. Both they and the smaller front wheels had rubber tyres, and there was a flat, uncomfortable-looking cushion to sit on.

Laboriously, Thomas went about the process of beginning to learn how to move in this newly-shaped body. Nurse Crawley watched him, her hands clasped tightly in front of her as though she was itching to lean over and help. To Thomas’s surprise and relief, she resisted.

Some of the other soldiers were watching. Thomas ignored them, determined not to give in to the embarrassed urge to ask Nurse Crawley to draw the curtains.

First, Thomas sat himself up properly, pushing away from the pillows. Then he used scissoring movements to edge his thighs over to the right side, wincing as the bandages rubbed against the wounds. While he sat on the edge of the bed, catching his breath, Thomas looked down at his knees. From here, it was difficult to tell that he had lost parts of himself at all. And yet, he felt strangely unbalanced.

It had been hard enough to find lovers  _ before _ all this. Surely no man would want him now.

Thomas blinked back tears. Despair would help nobody.

At Thomas’s instruction, Nurse Crawley moved the wheelchair flush against the bed so that it was facing the foot, with the seat-front just beside Thomas’s right knee.

Thomas leaned forward. His stiff back protested as he twisted to put his right hand on the right arm of the chair, his left hand on the bed to the side of and just behind him. He paused, gathering his nerve and his strength, then heaved himself up - over -

Intense, searing pain in his left shoulder sent Thomas crashing down onto the wheelchair seat. That must be from when he hit the rock.

The edges of Thomas's vision were fuzzy; he felt dizzy, and his muscles ached already.

He had made it, though.

Thomas remained slumped on the seat for several minutes, regaining his breath. Fear crept in; even that had been exhausting, and he was yet to even move the wheelchair at all. He felt utterly useless. How could he work like this?

Someone called to Nurse Crawley from across the room. She glanced over, looking torn.

“You should go,” Thomas said weakly, privately glad of the excuse to have one less pair of eyes on him. “It’s fine.”

Nurse Crawley gave him a small smile and a single nod. “Okay.” She started backing away. “You play. I mean, it’s not play. Experiment. You’ll get the hang of it in no time.”

Thomas nodded back, just to hasten her departure, though he had no such surety that he would become accustomed to this new way of moving in a hurry. He was almost annoyed with her for referring to it with such frivolity, but couldn't quite sustain the feeling.

Once he had somewhat recovered himself, and his vision had opened up again, Thomas carefully put his hands down and gripped the push-rim. He pushed forward slowly, experimentally, feeling the back of the chair pressing against his backside as it moved forward. His hands felt clumsy; he narrowly avoided trapping his fingers in the wheel spokes.

Turning was another learning curve. Once Thomas reached the end of his bed, he intended to turn right and make his way along the row of beds. It took a good few seconds of messing around, trying to coordinate things, before he managed a jerky manoeuvre in the right direction and continued on his way.

It was hard going. His muscles weren't used to this type of work. Thomas distracted himself by observing the occupants of the beds he passed. There was a boy who looked like he wasn't even old enough to have started shaving, who was reading a magazine. Right next to him was a stocky man of forty-odd years with an enormous moustache. Thomas recognised him from around the village, but couldn’t think who he was. Next to him, three youngsters clustered around an unconscious fourth, using his belly as a card table. The next bed was the last in the row, and contained a young man with light brown hair and bandages over his eyes.  _ Gas _ , Thomas thought idly as he struggled to perform a 180-degree turn without crashing into the wall.

He had, at least, been spared that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a grand total of zero words for chapter 5 and not much more of a plan. Time to go back to my vague outline. Wish me luck!  
> (Psst. I would love a comment if you have a mo :) )


	5. Chapter 5

Once he had made it back to bed, Thomas slept for a solid twelve hours. The following day, he spent much of his time frowning at the wall or ceiling in thought. Nurse Crawley teased that he'd be an old man by the time he was thirty if he kept it up. There was a lot he had to consider, though. It was unlikely that he would be able to go back into service now - and in any case, he didn't want to. Huddled in the trenches, he had sworn that he would do something different with his life if he ever got out of there. Make his own way. Working out what that way was going to be was the difficult bit. He had heard that there were jobs for wounded veterans - hard, boring, repetitive,  _ endless _ jobs that sounded, to Thomas, hardly better than the workhouse. And there was no way he was stepping down to that just because he had suffered the indignity of being blown up.

_ I serve my country and get rewarded with the workhouse, _ Thomas thought bitterly. True, he had only volunteered as a medic in the hope of avoiding the front line, but after two years out there, that seemed irrelevant. And he’d go round the twist without something to occupy his brain.

The war had given Thomas a taste of being valued - not by the faceless generals and politicians, certainly, who didn't much care if he lived or died, but by his fellows, who would rely on him in their darkest moments - and he wasn't in a hurry to give that up. Everything else about the war, he was happy to turn his back on, but that… it was something he had never felt as a servant. That idea of being important. In service, if he didn't turn up one day, what would happen? A few people would be cross. That was it. Whereas at the Front, his presence had really  _ mattered, _ it had  _ meant _ something.

Once, Thomas had thought that being important meant you had a lot of money, or political influence, like Lord Grantham, or that people stood up when you came into a room, like Mr Carson. Watching men die, day after day, fighting against God and nature to make them live, made all that seem petty and small. What really made you important was being important to other people.

In the afternoon, Thomas hauled himself into the wheelchair again, gritting his teeth against the twinge in his shoulder. After a brief rest, he pushed himself along the row of beds in the opposite direction to the day before, once again distracting himself by looking at the patients. There were a couple who had lost one or more limbs, just like Thomas, and another with bandages over his eyes like the bloke Thomas had seen at the end of the row yesterday.

It seemed the afternoon post had just arrived, because Nurse Crawley and another nurse were sorting it at a table in the corner. He could hear them talking as he approached.

“You take the men on the right,” the unknown nurse was saying; “And I’ll take the left. And someone’ll have to read for the blind one.”

“Oh, could you, Betty? I’ve such a lot to do this afternoon,” replied Nurse Crawley.

“Very well. He’ll have to wait though; Doctor Clarkson wanted to talk to me.”

“I’ll do it,” Thomas said without a second thought.

Both women turned to look at him. It was refreshing to realise that there was no surprise on their faces. If Thomas had made such an offer at Downton, he could well imagine the way the others would boggle at him. It somewhat put him off the whole idea of offering favours. But, despite working in Lady Sybil’s house, he was unknown to both of them. The thought was rather freeing.

Nurse Crawley's eyes had lit up, but the other - Betty - was frowning. “But Corporal Ba-”

“ _ Mr  _ Barrow,” Thomas jumped in.

“ _ Mr  _ Barrow, then. You're barely out of your sick bed.”

Thomas raised an eyebrow at her. “And how does that affect my eyesight?”

Betty opened her mouth, couldn't seem to think of anything to say, and looked to Nurse Crawley to argue her case.

She was to be disappointed. Nurse Crawley gave Thomas a big smile and an envelope. “Thank you, Mr Barrow. It's for Lieutenant Courtenay, in the bed at the end there.” She pointed; Thomas looked over his shoulder and realised that she was referring to the man at the end of Thomas's row with the bandages over his eyes. Logical enough.

Laying the envelope on his lap, Thomas turned the wheelchair around and felt a flicker of apprehension; the other side of the room looked a very long way away. He set off, refusing to be cowed. At least there were no more corners to be navigated on the way there. Thomas tried to breathe deeply through the ache in overtired muscles as he rolled past the other officers.

“Lieutenant Courtenay,” he said in greeting, once he had arrived.

Courtenay started in surprise.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to make you jump,” Thomas said, edging between the wall and Courtenay’s bed before sliding smoothly to a halt.

“You have very quiet footsteps,” said Courtenay, almost defensively, his polished accent coming out clipped.

“It’s what comes of having no feet,” Thomas quipped, ripping open Courtenay’s envelope. Before the man could find a reply, he went on: “I’m here to read your letter for ya.”

Courtenay sighed and tipped his head back against the pillows. He would have been looking at the ceiling if he’d been able to see.

“‘ _ My dearest Edward, _ ’” Thomas read. “‘ _ I’m so glad that you are in one piece, even if not undamaged. You are my darling son and I rejoice that you will be coming home to us. But things cannot be as they were and whatever you might think, Jack has your best interests at heart.’” _

“Stop,” Courtenay - Edward - said suddenly.

“Who’s Jack?” asked Thomas, looking up from the letter. It was difficult to read the expression on Edward’s face when it was still half-covered in bandages.

“My younger brother. He means to replace me. It’s what he’s always wanted.”

“Yeah, well…” Thomas said awkwardly, unsure whether to voice the ‘ _ it’s what younger brothers always want _ ,’ that was on the tip of his tongue.

“I’m sorry. I mustn’t bore you.” There was such a depth of thinly-veiled loneliness and despair in his voice that Thomas had the sudden urge to hug him.

“Don’t let ‘em walk all over you,” he advised instead. “You’ve gotta fight your corner.”

“What with?”

“Your brain. I assume you’ve got one o’ those still?”

“I suppose,” Edward replied. “I was up for Oxford before the war. But I only ever planned to farm. Farm, shoot, hunt, fish. Everything I’ll never do again.”

“You don’t know that. There’s been cases of gas blindness wearing off.”

“ _ Rare _ cases,” Edward spat. “And much sooner than this. It doesn’t help me to be lied to, you know. I’m finished. And I’d rather face it than dodge it.”

There was still fight in him somewhere, then. Thomas rather admired his spirit in facing up to it. “You’ve more chance of your eyesight comin’ back than I have of my legs growin’ back,” Thomas said; he wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t really funny, so it wasn’t a joke, and he wasn’t looking for pity - neither of them could be envied their position.

But Edward gave the smallest of smiles.

Thomas looked at the curve of his lips and realised that he might just be handsome under all those bandages.

It was only as Thomas left Edward with a letter he couldn’t read and rolled back to his own bed that Thomas realised he himself had not had a single letter or visitor since he had arrived. The thought made him feel very alone. He struggled into bed, weary and sore, and fighting tears as he felt his isolation almost as acutely as in the trenches. Back then, he had had the dream of coming home to cling to, but now that he was here, there had been nobody to welcome him. He had not spoken to his family in many a long year, and although O’Brien had written a couple of times while he was away, the lack of her presence now somehow seemed to make any friendly sentiment she had expressed into a lie.

Thomas crawled under his blanket, stared at the ceiling and tried, unsuccessfully, to sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

“Well well, I heard there was a layabout come home.”

Thomas lifted his head to see Sarah O’Brien coming to a halt by his bed, the evening sun casting a dim light over the room. “It’s officers and medical staff only in ‘ere,” he said, to cover how happy he was to see her. He hoisted himself up to sit against his pillows.

With a snort, Sarah retorted: “The nurses are far too busy to bother throwing me out. Anyway, I’m sure they’ll be glad of a visitor to keep  _ you _ out of trouble.”

A grin spread over Thomas’s face. “An’ when have you ever done that?”

“No time like the present.” Sarah plunked herself down in Thomas’s wicker wheelchair, somehow graceful and businesslike at the same time. There was a brutal efficiency to almost everything Sarah did.

Thomas bristled a bit at her sitting in his wheelchair. Even after just two days, he felt oddly protective over it.

“What happened, then?” Sarah asked, her eyes drifting over his blanket-covered body. “Branson never said. Just said he'd seen you in here.” The look in her eyes seemed to say ‘you look fine to me so how’d you swing that?’

If that was what she thought, she was in for a shock.

Thomas flipped the blanket off himself, waving a hand at the flat, empty bottoms of his pyjama trousers.

“My God…” she said softly. “What have they done to you?”

Shrugging, Thomas covered himself up again. He decided not to tell her that he had dislocated his shoulder, too.

Sarah pulled a packet of cigarettes and a lighter out of her jacket pocket and tossed them to Thomas. “Thought you'd be gasping.”

He was. They weren’t his preferred brand but he was touched that she had thought of it all the same.

Sarah retrieved another packet of cigarettes from her other jacket pocket and they lit up in unison, settling seamlessly back into their ritual of sharing a cigarette.

Just when the silence was on the edge of becoming awkward, Thomas asked: “How are things up at the house?” Ashes had dropped onto the white sheet; Thomas brushed them off onto the floor. Nurse Crawley, who happened to be passing, tutted at him.

“Busy. Mr Carson's running himself into the ground. He won't have maids in the dining room even though they'd probably do a better job than the men.” She paused as Nurse Crawley put a bedpan between them and nodded at her. “Milady.”

Nurse Crawley smiled at her. “Hello, Miss O'Brien. It's lovely that Mr Barrow has a visitor.”

Thomas shot her a small smile as she retreated to get on with her work. When he looked back, Sarah had her eyebrows raised at him.

“Mr Barrow, is it?”

Thomas shrugged and allowed himself a small smirk. “I'm not a footman any more. Think I get to be a ‘Mr’ if I like.”

“If you say so.” Sarah took a long final drag of her cigarette and dropped it into the bedpan, where it smoked lazily. “His Lordship has a new valet, Mr Lang. He's well enough.”

“Hmm,” Thomas answered vaguely, disposing of his own fag end. It felt strange to think of the place without himself as part of it.

“What happened to your hair?” Sarah asked, nodding at it.

Thomas grimaced and ran a rueful hand over his recently-shaved head. His hair grew quickly, but it was only a quarter-inch long - around two weeks’ growth. His facial hair had been in a similar state until that very morning, when one of the nurses had brought him a bowl of water, a mirror and a razor. “Lice,” he explained succinctly. It was definitely a relief to be rid of the little blighters, but he'd be happier when his hair grew back.

“I'd better be going,” Sarah said after a moment, standing up. She paused by his bedside. “Mrs Hughes sends her regards. I'll visit again when I can.” She turned to go.

“Thank you,” Thomas blurted out suddenly. “For writing to me.”

Sarah looked at him seriously, as though assessing whether he was genuine. Then she nodded, once. “I didn't know if it'd make any difference.”

“It did.”

She looked at him for a moment longer. “I know I wasn't there, lad, but I'm no swooning maiden either; if you ever want to talk about it - ever, even if we haven't spoken for ten years - I'll listen.”

Thomas raised his eyebrows, the invitation a surprise. It was a deceptively profound offer. He nodded silently, not knowing what to say.

She nodded back, a wordless understanding between friends. “Well then. Goodnight, Thomas.”

“'Night.”

He watched her go, his chest feeling tight. She hadn't known he was here. That was why she hadn't visited until now; she hadn't known. And she was a better friend than he had realised, with the cigarettes and all. Anyone else would have overwhelmed him with panicked questions - how did it happen, what will you do - but not Sarah O’Brien. She took things as she saw them. She trusted that he would work things out.

Just as Thomas was thinking that he should have asked Sarah to get him a book, he heard his name being called.

“Mr Barrow!”


	7. Chapter 7

Nurse Crawley was hurrying towards him. “Mr Barrow, I'm sorry, you must be tired - it's just that Lieutenant Courtenay is asking for you.”

“Lieutenant Courtenay?” Thomas repeated in confusion.

“Yes - do you remember, the man whose letter you read out for him earlier?”

Of course Thomas remembered the melancholy man. He had merely been surprised to be asked for at all.

“He wants to go outside and he won’t let us help him - he wants you to.”

Thomas furrowed his eyebrows at her. “Me? Why?”

“I don’t know, but that’s what he’s asking... It’s the first time he’s wanted to do  _ anything  _ since he got here,” she added in a hushed voice, her eyes pleading with him.

And despite his facade of indifference, Thomas could rarely resist the cry of someone in pain. Like wounded animals drawing together for what small protection they could find.

Especially when the request made him sound like someone important.

Pushing away his weariness and his blanket, Thomas swung his shortened legs over the side of the bed and hoisted himself into the wheelchair. For a long moment, he sat there contemplating, weighing his pride against his current strength. His voice was brusque with discomfort when he said: “A little push would be useful.”

Nurse Crawley gave him a little smile and moved to take hold of the wheelchair’s handles. Thomas grimaced as she started pushing; it felt weird and uncomfortable not to be in control of where he was going.

“You were askin’ for me?” Thomas said, once Nurse Crawley had parked him next to Edward's bed.

“Who's that?” Edward asked.

“I read your letter for you. Nurse Crawley said you asked for me.”

“Oh. The man with the nice voice.”

“I generally find ‘Thomas’ more convenient,” Thomas said smoothly, fighting the smile that threatened to ruin his suave front.

The corners of Edward's mouth twitched. “Thomas... Would you help me go outside?”

“Why me?”

Nurse Crawley whacked his shoulder. When he turned to glare at her, she glared right back. Thomas guessed she didn't want him upsetting Edward.

“I don't know,” Edward said quietly.

Thomas looked at him carefully. It was difficult to discern anything in the way of facial expressions because of the bandages over his eyes, but he still seemed nervous. Thomas figured he had a lot of things to be nervous about, given the fact that he was unlikely to ever see again.

He wasn’t sure what it was that made him feel drawn to Edward, but there was definitely something.

“Okay,” Thomas said, wheeling himself a little closer and turning the chair around. “Grab onto the handle of the wheelchair and you can follow me.”

Nurse Crawley, whom Thomas was now facing, moved around him to the head of the bed. Thomas shook his head quickly at her. Her gaze flicked between Thomas in his chair and Edward, whom Thomas could hear was beginning to move.

“Nurse Crawley will be walkin’ right next to you,” Thomas added to Edward, feeling a rush of air on his arm as Edward threw back his blanket.

“I’ll be making sure Mr Barrow doesn’t run over your feet,” said Nurse Crawley, obviously grasping that Thomas was trying to make this a laid-back process. Edward didn’t want to be a  _ patient _ , right now - if he did, he would have asked for a nurse. But he had asked for Thomas. Like any grown man, he just wanted to be able to head outside when he wanted to.

That was Thomas’s theory, anyway.

A little unsteadily, Edward got to his feet. He stood to the side of Thomas, gripping the right handle in his left hand, with his mouth set in a tight, unhappy line. Nurse Crawley looked as though she wanted to say something reassuring, but she shot a swift look at Thomas and held her tongue.

“Will you offer me your arm, Lieutenant?” she said instead, with a teasing lilt to her voice.

“Of course,” replied Edward quietly, offering his right elbow. The tips of his fingers ghosted over Thomas’s shoulder as he added: “I’d offer you my other arm, Thomas, but I think you’ll be a little busy pushing.”

_ Was that a sign? _ Thomas wondered.  _ Or just a joke? _ “We’ll have to wait for my legs to grow back,” he said dryly. As he leaned forward to push off, his shoulder moved out from under Edward’s fingers. When he sat back up, Edward had moved his hand back to the handle.

“What’s outside?” Edward asked anxiously as they turned to go down the aisle towards the courtyard door.

“It’s a courtyard,” said Nurse Crawley. “It’s mostly grass, and there are also a few trees. Oh! I just remembered, we should get you a cane. I’ll find one for you tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

They lapsed into silence until they had passed through the door to the twilit courtyard. Never mind Edward, it was getting dark enough that Thomas could barely see.

There was a slight resistance to Thomas’s pushing. When he looked round, he saw that Edward had come to a halt and was lifting his chin to draw in a long, deep breath.

“Are there stars?” Edward asked.

“No. It’s not quite dark enough yet,” Thomas answered.

“Oh…”

Thomas tried not to look at him too much with Nurse Crawley right next to them. “The Courtenays are an old family, aren’t you?” He knew full well they were; he was just curious to know how Edward fit in.

“The Earls of Devon are in the Courtenay family,” said Nurse Crawley. Of course, she would know.

“Yes,” Edward agreed. “We’re not really part of the main line. About a dozen people would have to die before I inherited the title. But it means we own the land we farm and that’s enough for me.”

“Do you miss it?” asked Nurse Crawley.

Edward said nothing. They all knew the answer anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jesus, this chapter fought me on every bloody sentence. Hopefully you can't tell.
> 
> Survey: I originally wanted to call this fic Keep Buggering On, a la Churchill, but I wasn't sure if that would be in bad taste (plus it's a war too early). What do y'all reckon?


	8. Chapter 8

Life quickly settled into a new rhythm. Thomas woke and was brought breakfast followed by washing and shaving things. Around midmorning, he would wheel himself around the hospital for a while, often fetching and carrying bandages, tablets and other supplies to the places they needed to go. A couple of the nurses had been leery of accepting his help at first, but he pointed out that he would usually head in the right direction at some point anyway and it was no more effort to push with a bottle of iodine in his lap than it was without. He was gaining strength rapidly.

Thomas would return to his bed for lunch and a rest before wheeling over to the bed at the end where Edward was. They'd talk for a little while and then either just the two of them or Nurse Crawley too would head outside for a while so Edward could practice using his cane.

One Sunday afternoon, after about a week of this, Thomas and Edward were sat on the bench in the courtyard. Edward had his face tipped up a little towards the sun. The bandages had been taken off the previous day - Thomas had watched furtively from his own bed, had seen Edward turning his head this way and that, had seen the slump in his posture and resigned nod, and had gone straight over when Dr Clarkson had finished to sit with him. Because if Edward's sight had not returned by then, it was never going to.

If Edward had cried, he had done so in private.

“You're a Christian, I suppose,” Edward said now. His white cane leant against the bench to his right.

“I suppose,” Thomas echoed. He waited for Edward to get to the point. He did this, sometimes; he'd make a vague statement in the general area of what he wanted to talk about, before launching in.

“Do you think it was in God’s plan for me to… be like this?”

Thomas considered the question carefully. Eventually, he said honestly: “I can’t imagine that Christ the Redeemer would want to cause anything to harm us.”

“Then… why?”

“Maybe…” Thomas began, thinking aloud. “Maybe these kind of things happen when we don’t follow God’s plan for us -”

“You mean it’s my fault?” Edward said shakily, a look of consternation on his face.

“No!” Thomas said at once, cursing his poor choice of words. He did not notice that he had put his hand on Edward’s knee. “I mean: God probably didn’t plan a war for us. We went against His plan, and the war got you hurt.”

Edward frowned and nodded slightly. After a moment, he laid his hand delicately over Thomas’s.

Thomas’s eyes shot to his face in surprise. Licking his lips nervously, he looked into Edward’s sweet, scarred face. “Maybe He just wanted to send you home… Maybe He knew Jack was makin’ a move on your farm… Or…” Thomas glanced briefly down at their hands, for courage, before looking back at Edward’s sightless eyes. He tried for just the right balance of sincerity and humour as he finished: “Maybe He just wanted you to meet me.”

The corners of Edward’s lips twitched up, and his head ducked, as though he was avoiding Thomas’s gaze even though he couldn’t see it. It was only the second time Thomas had ever seen him smile, and the first without the bandages over his eyes. Thomas had been right: Edward was very handsome.

Edward took his hand off Thomas’s and clasped both hands in his lap, so Thomas swiftly took his own hand off Edward’s knee.

“Do you know why I asked for you?” said Edward. “When I wanted to go outside?”

It took a few seconds for Thomas to marshal his thoughts; his palm was tingling from where it had touched Edward. “I thought that you didn’t want to be a patient. You wanted to feel… normal.”

Edward nodded slightly. “I feel that I am broken,” he began calmly, and when Thomas opened his mouth to argue, he seemed to sense it, and said quickly: “Don’t, Thomas. I feel that I am broken; that I am missing a piece of myself. And you… you have been broken too, but you are whole. Do you see?”

“Not so whole any more,” Thomas joked, but the teasing tone was a strain as he glanced at the wheelchair waiting next to him, beside the bench.

“Truly,” Edward insisted quietly. “You are injured, you are changed, but you are still yourself. There is great strength in that. I don’t know how you do it.”

“Had a lot of practice…” Thomas answered. “All my life, people have pushed me around, just ‘cause I’m different.”

“Why? How are you different?”

Thomas felt choked by words, by a lifetime of silenced confessions. He imagined leaning over and pressing his lips against Edward’s, no need for words at all, they could navigate their secrets in a language all of their own.

This time, it was Edward’s turn to put his hand tentatively on Thomas’s knee.

The sudden shout of: “Lieutenant Courtenay!” made both of them start. Edward let go of Thomas instantly, alarm in the rigid line of his spine. Thomas looked over his left shoulder to see Dr Clarkson approaching them. “Ah, it _is_ you,” he said, when he had reached them. There was a strange look on his face. “I could see you from the door, but Mr Barrow was in the way, so I wasn’t sure.”

Thomas narrowed his eyes at the doctor. That had sounded suspiciously like ‘ _ I’m not commenting on what you get up to but for God’s sake remember you’re in public. _ ’

Which sounded like he thought there was something between Edward and himself.

Thomas tried not to let the warm feeling in his chest show on his face.

This became much easier when Dr Clarkson explained why he had come over to speak to Edward.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I can only manage super-short chapters these days. The won't be changing anytime soon. Hope you enjoy it all the same.

“I want to congratulate you, Lieutenant Courtenay,” said Dr Clarkson when he drew nearer to the bench Edward and Thomas were sitting on. “You’re making good progress.”

Edward had stood up automatically. Thomas felt as though he ought to do the same - it felt very uneven to be the only one sitting - but of course, there was nothing he could do about that. “Thanks to my saviours, sir.”

Catching a glimpse of movement at the courtyard entrance, Thomas glanced over to see Nurse Crawley entering. She approached them swiftly, giving Thomas a small, warm smile and saying a quick hello to Edward.

“So you'll be pleased to hear,” Doctor Clarkson went on, a little louder to show his disapproval at being interrupted; “that we've all agreed it's time for you to continue your treatment elsewhere.”

Thomas's heart dropped like a stone.

“What?” said Edward flatly.

“At Fernly Hall,” Doctor Clarkson explained. “You're not ill any more. All you need is time to adjust to your condition. The staff at Fernly can help with that.”

Edward looked quietly terrified. “But sir… These two ARE helping me, here.”

Clarkson looked between Nurse Crawley and Thomas with an unimpressed expression. It was clear that the combination of recent nursing graduate and medically discharged army medic did not inspire him with much confidence. “Nurse Crawley and Corporal Barrow are not trained in specialist care -”

“Please,” Edward said desperately, but making a clear effort to hide his distress. “Don't send me away. Not yet.”

There had to be something Thomas could say to convince Clarkson. He couldn't stand Edward looking so afraid. “Sir, surely we…”

Clarkson ignored him, levelling a determined glare at Edward. “Lieutenant. You must know that every one of our beds is needed, for the injured and dying from le Havre.” He turned to Thomas. “Corporal -”

“ _ Mr _ ,” Thomas corrected him, hands gripping at the edge of the bench.

“I'll see you in my office.” He turned on his heel and strode away across the courtyard.

Thomas and Nurse Crawley both watched him go, before exchanging concerned looks with each other. Only yesterday, Sybil had pulled Thomas aside and asked if he thought Edward seemed very unhappy. ‘ _ It's not so bad when you're there,’ _ she had said, all earnestness. ‘ _ He lights up. But when you're not there…’ _

_ ‘He's always happy to see you,’  _ Thomas had said awkwardly, and she had given him an understanding sort of look that made him hot and cold all at once, and made him wonder how much she knew.

“I don't want to go,” Edward said quietly. “I… I don't know how I'd manage without you two…”

Nurse Crawley bit her lip and looked over at Thomas. She put her hand on Edward's shoulder. “You go and talk to Doctor Clarkson,” she said quietly to Thomas. “I'll give Edward a hand getting back.”

Thomas nodded grimly, and marched away to face Doctor Clarkson.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to people who have reviewed, it's genuinely the main thing stopping me from giving up on this fic ahaha. You're all wonderful :)

Thomas was already frustrated when he left Edward and Nurse Crawley, and the difficulty of maneuvering himself to get Doctor Clarkson's office door open did not help matters.

When Thomas entered, Doctor Clarkson was standing behind his desk looking murderous. Rather than cooling down, he seemed to have been stewing in his irritation. Unable to resist the urge to annoy him further, Thomas said in a sweetly polite voice: “Doctor Clarkson. How may I help?”

Doctor Clarkson took a deep breath, and let out again slowly, seeming to gather himself. When he spoke, his voice was almost calm. “Mr Barrow. I know that you have become accustomed to being a medic, but you are not one any longer; and in any case, being a medic and being a doctor are very different things. I cannot rightly claim that you are under my authority, but you are my patient, and I will NOT tolerate you attempting to undermine me.”

“I only meant to say that Lieutenant Courtenay is depressed,” Thomas tried to explain.

“I will not leave wounded soldiers sweating under canvas because one junior officer is DEPRESSED!” Clarkson retorted, losing his cool and shouting the last word. He was far worse at keeping his equilibrium than Carson.

There was a knock at the office door.

“Yes?!” Clarkson snapped, and Sybil marched in.

“I thought you may want to know what I think,” she began, with infinite dignity.

“Oh, why should I?! Nurse Crawley, I may not be your social superior in a Mayfair ballroom but in this hospital I have the deciding voice!” Doctor Clarkson glared from one to the other, making sure this statement had had the desired effect. “Please help him prepare his belongings, he leaves first thing in the morning.”

Thomas stared at the man. There had to be a way to make him change his mind. Edward wasn’t ready, he just wasn’t  _ ready _ to be moved out, away from the people who cared about him. Admittedly, a small part of it was selfishness - Thomas wasn’t ready for Edward to go either - but he was truly concerned about how Edward would fare on his own.

The notion occurred to Thomas that while Edward was still technically a Lieutenant, and Doctor Clarkson his commanding officer, Thomas himself was no longer a Corporal, and so Clarkson had no authority over him whatsoever.  _ Edward leaves first thing in the morning… _

“Then so do I,” Thomas said firmly. Out of the corner of his eye, Thomas could see Sybil staring at him, but he kept his eyes fixed on Doctor Clarkson.

Then Sybil seemed to draw herself up. “And so do I.”

Thomas gaped at her. She continued to look defiantly at Doctor Clarkson, so Thomas did the same. A muscle twitched in his forehead, and his lips were pressed so closely together that they could barely be seen beneath his moustache. Thomas braced himself for the explosion.

Doctor Clarkson slumped down into his chair, an expression of weary defeat taking over his face. He busied himself with what Thomas would have put money on being unnecessary sheets of paper, refusing to look at them as he ground out. “Very well. I’ll telephone and tell them to expect three of you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And breaking the record for the shortest update ever...
> 
> Next week: Thomas goes to visit the Abbey for the first time since he came home.


End file.
